


Mastery

by Fabrisse



Category: A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr
Genre: Gen, History
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28177587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: In 1373, Hugo Gildenehall comes to Oxgodby to paint a judgment.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Mastery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/gifts).



The apprentices looked at their vast task and inwardly debated dropping their tools and making a run for it. Surely, the wall was too vast for even Hugo Gildenehall to decorate. Hugo was a journeyman, hoping to make his name, which was why the parish had been able to hire him. His prior work had been judged excellent by the local knight and the priest who held the living voiced agreement with his patron.

Part of the agreement was Gildenehall he would take two local boys to apprentice while he worked, their parents would provide the midday meal except for Sunday which would be taken at the grange three miles away where he would, in exchange for a very fine meal, tell of his work for the week and assure the squire, Everard Hebron that he was getting his money’s worth for the work. If one or both of the boys left with him, there wouldn’t be a fuss. Gildenehall suspected he’d gotten two of the town miscreants as his helpers. 

At ten the mischief they could do was minimal. If they found the right work, they might even settle down and make something of themselves. Adam looked again at the wall and decided that if Gildenehall, Hugo he’d said to call him, was as good as the priest made him out to be, then he could face a lifetime of vast blank walls to leave the fields of Oxgodby. Thomas, always a doubter, thought nothing could come of mucking up a good wall, and resolved to mend his ways and stay to home. Maybe Cecily, that nice girl whose dowry would be three goats, could be his wife, once they were both fourteen or so.

These decisions were made within five minutes of their arrival in the church and seeing the short scaffolding the local carpenters had put up. Each boy, at ten, deciding on his manhood.

***  
Grinding was hard work. There were some few cheap items that could be ground at the miller’s up the brook where he had a small auxiliary stone used for things which couldn’t be eaten and needed to be done in bulk. Hugo had made an arrangement for a peck of flour a week to be picked up on Wednesdays and time on the wheel for certain of the lesser colors, like woad for outlining or the galangale used to tone down some of the reds and oranges where needed. 

The real colors, the lapis for blue or malachite for green, those would be ground in small batches using a mortar and pestle at the end to mix in the egg or water or oil, but first needing grinding against harder stones than they were. 

Thomas found quickly that the rough stone cross on the altar worked well for the carmine red needed for fancy cloaks. He did most of the rough grinding.

Adam though became trusted. Quality recognized quality and Adam and Hugo understood each other quickly. For Hugo, the delicacy of the line was the most important thing. For Adam, nothing exceeded the vibrancy of colors, so many colors he hadn’t known existed outside of bird’s wings. By the time the flames of hell were completed, to Christ’s left, Hugo was listening to Adam’s opinion on the types of color which would work best, and Adam was developing a steady enough hand to add thicker lines and touches.

Adam’s main work, like Thomas’, was grinding. He was the one who measured the dry color into water and mixed it fine. He learned quickly which colors needed egg as a fixative and which took the merest drop of oil to make them shine even when dried. 

Having made their decisions as to the best lives they could have as men, there was no jealousy between Thomas and Adam. Thomas was sent to the miller’s and asked to apprentice with him once the artist had left. The miller and his wife were childless and this offer was seen as a blessing from the almighty, someone who understood, who might love the mill as they did, would train and possibly become their ward to inherit.

Adam’s more advanced work beside Hugo was a relief to his parents. It looked like when the artist left, there would be one fewer mouth to feed. The child who seemed like a changeling to them, never much use on the farm, would go and perhaps make a name for himself in a freetown, maybe even sending for his younger brother or cousin one day to help him. Even if he did nothing more than depart, he would help his family through the next hard winter.

***  
By the time Sir Everard’s brother came back from the Crusades, most of hell had been filled. Every couple of weeks three carpenters came and Thomas and Adam were given a free day to visit their families and help on the farm. The following day, the scaffolding would be twelve feet higher and Adam and Thomas would do the first layer of whitewash to dry before the small, two foot square, parts of the wall would be done for Hugo to paint.

The carpenters had moved the high scaffold to the middle, Thomas was whitewashing the lower sections of heaven’s wall, while Adam stayed beside Hugo way up above the arch, mixing tiny bits of paint and handing him brushes while Hugo Gildenehall earned the title of Master drawing the most exquisite Christ and Saint Michael, creating vivid judges.

Adam nearly wept for joy when he was allowed to use the flat brush nearly the width of his thumb knuckle to layer on ultramarine for the Virgin’s cloak. Hugo followed while the wall was still tacky with a tiny brush, only a few hairs wide, to lay perfect gilt stars over the blue.

The carpenters had chuckled over hell. Gildenehall’s ability to make the faces vivid meant they recognized Maud Ellerbeek in a scold’s bridle, close enough to the top that the congregation would only be able to speculate that it was she. One of the Judges looked like Sir Everard Hebron, and the false priest was vague enough not to be an indictment, yet clear enough people would know it to be their parish priest who had opposed the marriage of two young people even though their parents had approved.

The first scandal happened about a month after Piers returned from the crusade. He had been ill, been imprisoned, been wounded, so no one was surprised that he stayed at the manor rather than attend church in the village on Sunday with his brother’s household.

This Sunday, the priest had prayed for Piers’ soul to be redeemed and lifted from the mire of sin. Father Askam had praised the goodliness of pork, said that the apostles had freed the world from the silly dietary restrictions of the Jews, and generally shaded his sermon toward the goodliness and purity of true Christianity.

As the weeks went by, Piers still wasn’t seen and the servants from the manor gossiped when they came down on market day that Piers didn’t attend daily prayers in the manor’s chapel, that he covered his head and prayed on a mat after washing his hands five times a day, that he had brought back the Muslim heresy.

This was too great a scandal for Oxgodby to believe. Muslims were dark people with funny shoes that hid their hoofs, heretics of the worst kind. It couldn’t be believed that Sir Everard’s brother, the handsome Piers, had returned in blasphemy. 

***  
The scaffolding had been getting lower on heaven’s side. People pointed to images, mostly those who could only be seen from the back climbing to heaven, and saying that it was the image of Aunt Ethel or Grandfather Alfred. Some, privately, said they were among the people climbing to heaven, though the painter hadn’t liked to show up the others in the town.

In Adam’s estimation, another fortnight would have completed the work. Thomas had already arranged a contract between his father and the miller to begin as soon as Gildenehall and Adam left for York. Gildenehall had spoken to Edgar Ellerbeek about Adam joining him as a full apprentice, likely to make journeyman by the time he was sixteen. All was ready for the final work and unveiling.

Work was stopped at the very last minute by a funeral, or rather the fight over one. Piers Hebron, Crusader, had died. Father Askam had written to the Bishop -- in a very poor hand Hugo had informed his apprentices -- to state that burial in the churchyard was to be refused. The Bishop had agreed.

When Sir Everard tried to force the matter, the church was shut entirely. The entire town under interdict until the Hebrons acquiesced to the Bishop’s decision. Hugo and his apprentices were forced to wait to finish, so close to the end, until the church was reopened.

After six weeks of fighting, with Piers stored in a cold cellar to stop the worst of the putrefaction, Hugo had gone up to the grange and asked to speak with Sir Everard. When he returned the following day, he went to the smith and a carpenter who had liked Piers Hebron before he’d gone to war, and enlisted them to be at the back of the church, right behind the altar, at midnight. The moon was crescent, the beginning of Ramadan Hugo said, though it was years before Adam understood what that meant.

Hugo, Adam, and Thomas listened for sounds of the priest going to bed and began to dig a grave. At midnight, the two men from the town joined them driving a muffled wagon. They lifted the small coffin off the back and lowered it into the hole, offering to fill it themselves. All three of the men, said the paternoster and Adam recited the 121st Psalm which he’d been given to learn as a penance before his first communion.

Sir Everard sent for Father Askam before breakfast, and the following Sunday, he and Piers wife and sons performed a public penance on the church porch followed by the first full mass said in nearly two months. 

After mass, Father Askam had taken Hugo aside. Adam heard part of the argument, but most of it was too hushed. He wasn’t surprised when his new master asked him to prepare a small area near the tops of the flames of hell for a final portrait. Thomas prepared a piece of wall on heaven’s side for Adam to color while Hugo finished a luminous portrait of a man with a crescent on his forehead being consumed by the fires of hell.

When the last of the scaffolding was taken down, a large blotchy area was uncovered at the very edge of hell.

Father Askam said that Hugo Gildenehall wouldn’t be paid unless it was finished. Once again, Gildenehall walked the three miles to the grange and spoke with Sir Everard.

***  
The last Sunday in Oxgodby, the whole of the painting was shown to the congregation. Thomas, sitting with the Miller's, looked at the final bit of hell, not so good as the rest, that he’d painted after Hugo and Adam had packed up.

Thomas saw them to the edge of town. They’d left him some of the cheaper colors, some linseed oil, and a penciled outline over the lime wash. As they crossed the line separating the town from the rest of Yorkshire, he saw Hugo stop and take off his shoes, shaking them and then beating them against a boulder before sitting and putting them back on. He asked Adam to do the same. 

“It’s in the Bible, Thomas, to shake off the dust of a town which doesn’t respect the word of God when one leaves it.”

Thomas thought for a moment. “You did right, Master Gildenehall.”

Adam nodded, beating his shoes one last time before slipping them back on. “It was wrong to judge a sick hurt man and say he couldn’t be buried. You did right, Master Gildenehall.”

“I’m not a master, boys.”

Thomas said, “We seen what you done, Master.”


End file.
